Friday, 17 December 2004

The law concerning magic mushrooms, a Class A drug, has not been updated for 30 years.

Recently in the uk a number of shops have been (gasp!) openly selling the drug as unprocessed mushrooms.

Home Office spokeswoman said: "There is a need to clarify the law so that it's completely clear that fresh magic mushrooms as well as dried are illegal, to clamp down on some cases where magic mushrooms have been sold openly,"

as usual our individual adult rights to choose what we do with our own bodies and minds, our adult freedom regarding pleasure, consciousness and perception, doesn't even enter into the equation.

The ability to directly alter subjective and emotional experience will make mental manipulation an art form. By George Dvorsky

Last year in Toronto, as an outgrowth of their PhD research into biofeedback, cyborgs James Fung and Corey Manders used EEG (brainwave) technology to give a concert in which audience members collectively and unconsciously created music with their minds. Called "DECONcert: Regenerative Music in the Key of EEG," the result was an experimental and jazz-like form of music that placed human beings into the feedback loop of a computational artistic process.....

The Violence of Our Lives: Interviews With American Murderersby Tony Parker

amazon.comconversations with seven individuals who have served their sentences, and nine prisoners. these 16 people candidly explain the circumstances that preceded their crimes and discuss their lives both before and after them. By affording us these revealing glimpses into the diverse lives of individuals who never deny their guilt, Parker also gives us compelling reading.

the uk edition is called The Violence of Our Lives: Interviews with Life-sentence Prisoners in Americaamazon.co.ukand its online synopsis differs also: Contains interviews with 18 life-sentence prisoners in America, who are regarded as dangerous and violent with no chance of release.

plus....

Life after life: Interviews with twelve (uk) murderersby Tony Parker
amazon.co.ukamazon.com12 people who have killed other human beings; they talk honestly, painfully and directly about themselves and their crime, describing how they came to commit murder, and what being a murderer means.

Analysis of the information will be used to determine the emotional peaks and troughs of game playing.

"The sale of a computer game depends upon the initial five minutes of play and the eMotion Laboratory will help designers to determine which moments are emotionally stimulating, and which fail to impress."

The HIV positive children had been enrolled on the secret trials without their relatives' or guardians' knowledge and the drugs were making the children ill. highly controversial and secretive drug experiments have been conducted on orphans and foster children as young as three months old. The HIV positive children and their loved ones have few rights if they choose to battle with social work authorities in New York City.

nobody had told Jacklyn Hoerger that the drugs she was administering were experimental and highly toxic. "We were told that if they were vomiting, if they lost their ability to walk, if they were having diarrhoea, if they were dying, then all of this was because of their HIV infection."

those who tried to take the children off the drugs risked losing them into care.

"We're talking about serious, serious side-effects. These children are going to be absolutely miserable. They're going to have cramps, diarrhoea and their joints are going to swell up. They're going to roll around the ground and you can't touch them."

David Rasnick, visiting scholar at the University of Berkeley, went on to describe some of the drugs - supplied by major drug manufacturers including Glaxo SmithKline - as "lethal".

600 low-income African-American males, 400 infected with syphilis are monitored for 40 years. Even though a proven cure (penicillin) became available in the 1950s, the study continues until 1972 with participants denied treatment. Perhaps as many as 100 died of syphilis during the study. In some cases, when subjects were diagnosed as having syphilis by other physicians researchers intervened to prevent treatment.

Welcome to Slab City Located on the former Camp Dunlap Navy base east of Niland California, slab city is the adopted home of snow birds and misfits drawn to the unregulated life of squatting in the desert. Slab city received its name from the concrete slabs which remain from the former base buildings. The slabs make convenient parking spots for rv'ers, and during the winter over 3000 people call this place home. There is no cost for parking at slab city, its the last free campsite in america, and theres no public services, although water, propane and and atm are available in nearby Niland.

"theres lots of prejudice against slabbers because we're poor. but we're rich in life. i've learnt a lot about life here, how to get by without things." says willie aged 17

"Detournement involving dancing around London's Trafalgar Square dressed in an 8 foot papier-mache pigeon costume with a 'NEW Pigeon McNuggets' sign on its chest. I was accompanied by a friend dressed in a McDonald's uniform with a placard reading 'Try our Delicious New Pigeon McNuggets'."

jamie johnson has also set fire to his trousers outside the calvin klein store in london's bond street, and stuck calvin klein logos over tins of baked beans and tried selling them at an upmarket eatery for 2.50 a can.

in 1999 he was quoted as saying "on my course (st.martins), most people's biggest ambitions was to go and make adverts for nike. i just wanted to go and stinkbomb niketown."

as late as 1737, william whiston, newton's disciple and his successor in the lucaisian chair of mathmatics at cambridge, maintained that the assaults of invisible demons were no more to be denied than newton's demonstrations about the power of gravity.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan's account of the development of secrecy as a mode of regulation in American governance since World War I - how it was born, how world events shaped it, how it has adversely affected momentous political decisions and events, and how it has eluded efforts to curtail or end it.

for example: Had america spent less time trying to gather secret information about the Soviets and more time openly discussing rather easily interpretable data, Moynihan argues, we might have been far less paranoid about the supposed Red menace. US intelligence failed to recognize the importance of Russia's enormous social and economic problems. instead, fantastical notions of soviet strengths flourished because rational discussion was inhibited. the result was a huge military overspending by the US which drove it deep into debt, a war that might have been avoided in vietnam and a series of covert and dirty operations that caused untold suffering.

He concludes: "The central fact is that we live today in an Information Age. Open sources give us the vast majority of what we need to know in order to make intelligent decisions. Decisions made by people at ease with disagreement and ambiguity and tentativeness. Decisions made by those who understand how to exploit the wealth and diversity of publicly available information, who no longer simply assume that clandestine collection-that is, 'stealing secrets'-equals greater intelligence. Analysis, far more than secrecy, is the key to security....Secrecy is for losers."

One night in October 1986, CBS News anchor Dan Rather ("the third most watched news anchor in the United States") was walking down a Manhattan street when he was punched from behind and thrown to the ground. His assailant kicked and beat him while repeating, "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" over and over again.

The attack inspired the 1994 R.E.M. song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth." singer Michael Stipe said of the incident: "It remains the premier unsolved American surrealist act of the 20th century. It's a misunderstanding that was scarily random, media hyped and just plain bizarre."

In 1997, based on a tip from a psychiatrist and/or when the New York Daily News published a photo, Rather's attacker was identified as William Tager. It is reported that Tager (serving a 25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside the Today show studio in 1994), blamed news media for beaming signals into his head, and thought if he could just find out the correct frequency, he could block those signals that were constantly assailing him.

A troubled couple sets out from a dismal future to retrieve Elvis Presley from a parallel 1954. They need the King to be a savior to what's left of humanity, but he's a murderous freak with no desire to be anyone's god.

Elvissey is set in Jack Womack's maybe-not-cyberpunk future, where the Dryco corporation runs everything, and everyone has been or will be "regooded," for their own good. Womack writes in an evolved language, full of odd verbs and newspeak: "He unpocketed a bottle of small blue pills; Dryco's standard eyedots and smile were imprinted upon each tablet. Three hours sole could pass between dosings, no more, no less. Swallowing dry, he fixed a doorways stare; shook, and resettled.... Regooded or not, his unscratchables still itched."

"philosophy tolerates and always has tolerated strange ideas," says Ted Honderich, "for example, i have a colleague whose principle contribution to thought -which may yet get published as a book- is that we are all one person."

Thursday, 16 December 2004

vincent gallo.... on making movies(from a time out interview 1998)

"...i have my own petty grievances and hang-ups, but i hope that in acting out those vengeances or obsessions one creates objects or languages that transcend it and can be adapted to something bigger."

"do you know what its like to make a movie? its like a war, its hard. its the worst pain in the world. how could somebody possibly go through that experience for 20 months for no money, working with a bunch of knuckleheads and self-centered, ungrateful pricks, who go on and on... what the fuck do you think could drive a person to do that? the feeling of wanting to control things as much as possible, wanting to resolve painful memories and thoughts and ideas, and beautiful memories, thoughts and ideas, to try to redisplay and rechoreograph your emotional life. the trouble with most american film-makers today, they already have an idea of how they want to be perceived, of what success means and how broad an audience they want. very few films are made with soul, you know. everyone wants to be the next big thing at sundance or something..."

war is peace... freedom is slavery... ignorance is strength... war is peace... freedom is slavery... ignorance is strength... war is peace... freedom is slavery... ignorance is strength... OH HANG ON A MINUTE.....

In a direct blow to the uk government's outrageous anti-terror measures, the Law Lords ruled by an eight to one majority in favour of appeals by nine detainees. The Law Lords said the measures were incompatible with European human rights laws. detaining people indefinitely on suspicion alone contravenes democratic rights and international obligations. One of the law lords, Lord Hoffmann of Chedworth suggested that detaining people indefinitely without trial was itself a far bigger threat to the nation than terrorism. "the real threat to the nation is not terrorism but laws like these." Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead ruled that: "Indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial is anathema in any country which observes the rule of law. It deprives the detained person of the protection a criminal trial is intended to afford."

but new Home Secretary Charles Clarke said the men would remain in prison. The ruling creates a major (and welcome) problem for Mr Clarke on his first day as home secretary following David Blunkett's resignation. the draconian anti-terror legislation was brought in by Mr Blunkett as a knee-jerk response in the wake of September 11th. clarke said the measures would "remain in force" until the law was reviewed.

Most of the men are being held indefinitely without trial in Belmarsh prison, south-east London, and have been there for around three years. but the detention had driven at least four of the detainees to "madness", two were being held in Broadmoor psyciatric hospital.

November 2003: Muhammad Salim, 45, allegedly shot during a raid on his home

10 November 2003: Hanan Schmailawi hit by machine gun fire while eating with her family

Lord Justice Rix and Mr Justice Forbes ruled that UK jurisdiction could extend to a UK-run prison, but did not apply "to the total territory of another state". They said as Mr Mousa was in custody when he died, his case was covered by the ECHR, but the reported cases of five other Iraqi victims failed as they were at home, walking in the street or driving when they died..... (just like thousands of other ordinairy iraqi citizens slaughtered under the pretence of delivering FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY.)

Honda Motor has announced the next-generation ASIMO humanoid robot, targeting a new level of mobility that will better enable ASIMO to function and interact with people by quickly processing information and acting more nimbly in real-world environments.
(via near near future)

"Damanhur is an internationally renowned center for spiritual research. Situated in Valchiusella Valley, in the Alpine foothills of northern Italy, Damanhur is a Federation of Communities and Regions with over 800 citizens, a social and political structure, a Constitution, 40 economic activities, its own currency, schools and a daily paper." it was founded in 1976

Tempio dell' Uomo (The underground Temple of Man):This is a unique underground building carved out of solid rock inside a small mountain. stretching more than 100 feet down into the mountain, their temple is the size of an 11 storey building. it occupies more than 3,500 square feet. Its existence only became known to the outside world in 1992.

The Damanhurians began work on their underground Temple of Mankind in secret, tunnelling through the mountain by hand and discretely redistributing the tons of rock around the countryside. Originally it was intended just for spiritual research and practice. It is full of secret passages and sliding panels and secret rooms designed to keep their work private. However when it was discovered by the Italian government and the Catholic church following a Judas like betrayal by one of the 12 originators, there was the threat that the government would destroy it. Luckily, the investigators were so overawed by its beauty that many wish to protect it as a national monument. The Damanhurians argue that the region in which it is situated has no planning regulations governing underground structures. when planning regulations for the region were drawn up nobody gave any thought to subterranean temples. the contoversy has slowed progress on its continued construction though, as the temple is intended to be 12 times bigger than it is already.

the Damanhurians view the Temple as a type of "alchemic laboratory". the spiritual, scientific and cultural all come together as the members of the Damanhur community experiment with, among other things, time travel. After years of study, they claim to have devised a system that takes you back to the past.

If we remind ourselves of what Professor Hawking believes, that research into time travel 'doesn't involve much money - what it needs is an openness of mind to consider possibilities that might appear fantastic', the Damanhurians seem to fit the bill like a Lycra glove.

The Damanhurians have developed two separate ways of travelling in time. One involves the transmission of what they call the 'subtle body' of the traveller, which could be more accurately translated as the 'essence' or 'spirit' of that person. The other involves full dematerialisation and rematerialisation of both subtle and physical body.

Two crucial concepts relating to Damanhurian time travel are the Time Mine and the Time Cabin. The Time Mine is a 'geographical area - natural or man-made - and usually underground', characterised by the presence of 'synchronic flowings' (lines and knots). Time Mines are at their strongest when several of these synchronic lines converge to form 'knots' (as they do at Damanhur).

The Damanhurians believe that Time Mines 'enable us to build energy stations of real advanced complexity to use for dimensional exchanges, time and space travel, alchemical laboratories for reincarnation programmes or for character exchanges, healing cabins, etc'. Time Mines are places which have the potential to store sufficient energy, both from the synchronic lines and from human activity, to enable time travel to occur. The 'Tempio dell' Uomo' has been built on a very large Time Mine, the characteristics of which have been greatly amplified by the ritual singing, dancing, chanting and art which occurs therein, as well as the alchemical language that adorns the walls and pillars of the rooms. The vast circuitry of the Temple, connected to the spheroselfs and other storage mechanisms, allows sufficient energy to be stored in that one place to enable time travel.

their liberators didn't offer gay prisoners any justice either. the allied judges, who wrote the german constitution after the liberation, determined that the homosexual concentration camp prisoners were criminals, not victims.... not persecuted. these men were therefore forced into silence by the shame of their situation. the feeling of isolation must have been deadening.

In this book, John Boswell proves beyond dispute that in pagan Antiquity and during Christianity's first millenium, - for around 2000 years - extensive legal sanction was given to pair-bonding between males, and that societies found little difficulty in accepting the concepts that homosexual ties could indeed be family and familiar relationships.

Through analysis of a multitude of induction ceremonies, contractual forms, covenants, oaths, blessings, arrangements for the disposition of property and other types of publicly testified and legally-morally binding unions, Boswell shows that Christendom has had a major homosexual past which weighty authorities during the last few 100 years have chosen to suppress or ignore.

Helminiak, a Roman Catholic priest, has done careful reading in current biblical scholarship about homosexuality. While cautioning against viewing biblical teaching as "the last word on sexual ethics," he stresses the need for accurate understanding of what the biblical "facts" are and concludes that "the Bible supplies no real basis for the condemnation of homosexuality."

Helminiak examines the story of Sodom (where the sin was inhospitality), Jude's decrying sex with angels, and five texts-Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, Romans 1:27, I Corinthians 6:9, and I Timothy 1:10-all of which, he concludes, "are concerned with something other than homogenital activity itself." Through it all and in the end, Helminiak theorizes that the Bible doesn't even address (therefore, condemn) same-gender sex as it is understood in contemporary terms and that anyone seeking the definitive answer about homosexuality being acceptable or evil, will need to find the answer somewhere else.

in The Children Are Free, Rev. Jeff Miner and John Tyler Connoley offer a comprehensive yet easy-to-read examination of the biblical evidence regarding same-sex relationships and God's attitude toward them.

in Chapter One, the authors lead the reader through a discussion of each of the six passages traditionally used against gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. In their friendly and authoritative style, they demonstrate how an anti-gay interpretation is a misapplication of these scriptures.

Second, they argue that gays and lesbians can be found in the Bible and receive sympathetic treatment. for example: David and Jonathan. However, Christians should be most interested in the New Testament and not the Old. This makes the account of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, and his slave (whom Peter healed) particularly interesting.

it shows how Jesus' own approach -- affirming people over rules -- calls for Christians to embrace gay people as good, and part of God's creation.

Enlil ("lord wind") is the god of air, wind and storms. Enlil is the foremost god of the Mesopotamian pantheon, and is sometimes referred to as Kur-Gal ("great mountain"). he was born of the union of An (heaven) and Ki (earth). These he separated, and he carried off the earth as his portion. In later times he supplanted Anu as chief god. His consort is Ninlil with whom he has five children: Nanna, Nerigal, Ningirsu, Ninurta, and Nisaba.

Enlil holds possession of the Tablets of Destiny which gives him power over the entire cosmos and the affairs of man. He is sometimes friendly towards mankind, but can also be a stern and even cruel god who punishes man and sends forth disasters, such as the great Flood which wiped out humanity with the exception of Atrahasis. Enlil is portrayed wearing a crown with horns, symbol of his power. His most prestigious temple was in the city Nippur, and he was the patron of that city.

MIT scientists have cultured small pieces of heart tissue which beat in the same way as the organ. The approach involves seeding cardiac cells from a rat onto a 3D polymer scaffold, which slowly biodegrades as the cells develop into a full tissue.

The cell/scaffold constructs were bathed in a medium that supplies nutrients and gases, then were stimulated with electrical signals. The key might be this electrical stimulation that helps condition the cells so that they communicate with each other and contract in a synchronized form.

The next stage will be to try to create samples of tissue that are the right thickness for potential use in transplants. The work could lead to new ways of repairing heart damage since heart muscle cells cannot regenerate after injury and heart cells are difficult to culture by conventional methods.

Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr of the Tissue Culture & Art Project have "grown" a quarter-scale replica of Stelarc's ear using human cells. The ear is cultured in a rotating micro-gravity bioreactor which allows the cells to grow in three dimensions. The ear is fed with nutrients every 3-4 days in a sterile hood.

Extra Ear 1/4 Scale confronts cultural perceptions of "life" given our increasing ability to manipulate living systems and deals with the ethical and perceptual issues stemming from the realization that living tissue can be sustained, grown, and is able to function outside the body.

Stelarc plans to attach the ear to his forearmarm as a soft prosthesis. TC&A will also be growing other facial parts for the artist: a nose, lips and a shape of the eyes, connecting them to form a living mask.

Each head possess an animal, vegetable, or mineral mind, and together they debate the nature of violence, and discuss their fears – generally their fears about each other. They also wonder about "that thing" before them. Although they hear each other, nothing seems to penetrate or influence their ideas; no matter what the subject matter discussed, they eventually return to their own interests and fixed ideas.

The dialog is not pre-recorded, and is always different, generated in real time by a computer program. The conversations are neither completely scripted, nor are they random. The software provides each with a "personality", a vocabulary, associative habits, obsessions, and other quirks of personality. And although he masterminds the programming behind what the robots say, Feingold himself never knows exactly what will come out of their mouths.

plus...

Autobot by Boryana Dragoeva, is an artificially-intelligent chat partner. By logging in to the web-based chat interface, you can teach your very own Autobot to communicate.

At first Autobot is an electronic idiot, it can only repeat what you say. The bot learns from talking with you: he or she can be whoever you want. Each bot becomes a reflection of the mind and moods of its creator.

Last year, Dragoeva spent 2 weeks in Liverpool where she collaborated with four people to train chat bot personalities as their best friend, evil twin, and ideal romantic partner. The resulting personalities, known as Spookybots, are also showcased as part of the Autobot website.

The point of is that "The burden of creation is a terrible one - at dark times, many of us may have asked the question, Why were my parents so cruel, that they made me live in this awful world? As artificial technologies become increasingly sentient over the next century, how will we answer this question, when it is
asked by our new creations?"

"Kill a stranger;
Start a custard pie fight;
Smash a television set;
Rob a bank;
Take part in the Tour de France;
Break a world record;
Write a Bill/Rocky script and have it made;
Milk a hippo;
Witness a natural disaster;
Own a monster truck;
Join the army;
Kill a dolphin;
Fight bare knuckle with gypsies;
Sink a tall ship."

In 2001, on the request of Temporary Services, Angelo, an American incarcerated artist, wrote "Prisoners' Inventions", some 110 pages of drawings and writings about the many ingenious, necessary, and sometimes bizarre things prisoners have to invent to soothe their daily life.

"When first approached with the idea of illustrating examples of inmate inventiveness, I was skeptical, thinking that there would be little of real interest to depict. When I set my mind to the task, though, I recognized the surprising range of inventions and innovations that I had witnessed. I had just become so used to it all that the uniqueness no longer registered."

During the Transmediale festival in Berlin, an exhibition will show enlarged type-set facsimiles of Angelo's illustrations and a selection of copies of the objects. Temporary Service will also talk about the lack of access prisoners have to computers, the internet or most things digital. Angelo has never seen the internet.
(via near near future)

Buy Nothing Day is only one day. Our earth, our minds, our communities deserve more than that. So this year, let's take the fun, passion and message of BND and spin it to inspire a whole shop-free season! Gather family and friends, let's rise above the consumer binge and celebrate a Buy Nothing Christmas. But wait. Without the plastic gifts, how will you show you care? .........

The simultaneous occurrence of hunger and of mountains of surplus food is obscene

The EU common agricultural policyThe common agricultural policy, better known as the CAP, is a system of subsidies paid to EU farmers. Its main purposes are to guarantee minimum levels of production, so that Europeans have enough food to eat, and to ensure a fair standard of living for those dependent on agriculture. The policy costs around £30bn a year - or half the EU's £60bn annual budget - and even the agreed reforms do not really reduce the cost.

the annual income of an EU dairy cow exceeds that of half the world's human population.

and the subsidies cause overproduction.

The EU cannot use all its agricultural products, so it sells them cheaply to the third world. This undercuts local farmers, who cannot compete with the heavily-subsidised imports, and so distorts the market (though the EU is not alone in this, as the US also dumps subsidised agricultural products on developing markets).

The CAP has also been blamed for encouraging environmentally damaging intensive farming. Its commitment to guarantee prices makes it economically worthwhile to use all available land, with the aid of chemicals, to grow more crops than are demanded by consumers.

The first paradox is that the world has never grown so much food; there is no overall scarcity and food has seldom been so cheap. The simple equation in the politics of food today is that hunger equals poverty. What we see now is the relatively new phenomenon of increasing hunger amid ever-greater plenty. Just because a country produces more food does not mean it has no malnourished people. The US grows 40% more food than it needs, yet 26 million Americans need handouts. India's grain silos have been bursting for the past five years and a record surplus of 59 million tonnes has been built up, yet almost half of all Indian children are undernourished, tens of millions of people go hungry and many hundreds of poor farmers have committed suicide.

The second paradox is that farmers in poor countries are, in this time of global plenty, abandoning agriculture because they just cannot compete with the heavily subsidised foods which are flooding into their countries on the back of world trade rules and IMF conditions that force them to open up their markets.

Farmers in Indonesia have been queuing to sell their rice even as the government imports it from Vietnam. In Pakistan, many farmers have reportedly burnt their harvests in desperation because the prices they can command are too low. The local rice market in Ghana has collapsed under US and Thai imports.

From Haiti to Mexico and Mozambique to Tanzania, small farmers are selling up, unable to compete with the barons of world agriculture and unable to take advantage of the increasingly global trade in food. The US has recently introduced a farm bill which will increase subsidies to the largest agri-businesses by $18bn a year for 10 years. The effect this will have on third world farmers in incalculable.

Britain is throwing away up to 500,000 tonnes of edible food each year

it is estimated that more than £386m worth of food is wasted in Britain each year, and most of this ends up in landfill sites. This practice cannot continue, as Britain is committed to reducing the amount of food waste going to landfill by 60% by 2016, and landfill tax is due to rise dramatically.

it was reported that up to 50% of organic crops are rejected (by retailers) for aesthetic reasons (Guardian 19 January 2004).

meanwhile an estimated 4 million people in this country alone suffer from poor diet because they cannot afford nutritional food.

in the US, where 27% of all food is thrown away, food retailers and processors get tax breaks to give surplus food away. More than 660,000 tonnes are given to charities who feed one in 10 of the population each year.

in the uk Grocery Aid was set up in 1992 and involved major producers, retailers and logistic companies. Grocery Aid relied mainly on mis-packaging or labelling products, but with the introduction of computer controlled production this has almost been eliminated. It ceased operating c2000 due to lack of food to distribute, mislabelled products were no longer available (i.e. being produced).

archive...

In the past 10 months (of 2000), the government's food intervention board dumped almost 30,000 tonnes of fresh vegetables and fruit which had been withdrawn from the market to guarantee farm prices.

Tesco, the largest food retailer in Britain, said (in 2000) that it throws away 28m (sterling) of food a year, a figure believed to be roughly equal to Sainsbury's.

One supermarket group, which asked not to be identified, admitted discarding up to 100,000 tonnes of food a year, of which "most" was edible.

Some people protest against illegal logging by 'ethically shoplifting' goods from stores.

you must have absolute evidence that the goods were made from unlawfully obtained materials, and you should take them straight to the nearest police station, or a police officer, to turn them in and make a formal complaint, otherwise you can be convicted for shoplifting — sections 1 to 6, Theft Act 1968, and/or section 3, Theft Act 1978 ('making off without paying').

in 1993 ANGIE ZELTER started an organisation called CRISP-O which stands for Citizens Recovery of Indigenous Peoples Stolen Property Organisation which encouraged the "Ethical shop-lifting" of mahogany out of shops and timber-yards and into police stations so that they could be returned to their rightful owners - the Amazonian tribal peoples. She produced a campaigning briefing pack for this work that is still in use.

"its likely that 80 per cent of the mahogany used in furniture has come from reserves. they are devastating the reserves and indigenous people have been shot dead because they tried to stop the invasion"

another example of ethical shoplifting.... Barnes and Noble -the Wal-Mart of bookstores- is hated by most anti-materialists because they tend to come into town and put all the small independent bookstores out of business. In Boston, activists launched a covert campaign where they stole hundreds of books from Barnes and Noble and donated them to local schools. This campaign was hugely effective in getting books to schools, and Barnes and Noble hardly noticed the difference. In this case, the activists’ goals were simply to get something that the community needed from a corporation that had more than enough resources to spare.

"Shoplifting forces us to take risks and experience life firsthand again. Perhaps shoplifting alone will not be able to overthrow industrial society or the capitalist system... but in the meantime it is one of the best forms of protest and self-empowerment, and one of the most practical, too!"

“Shoplifting is a refusal of the exchange economy. It is a denial that people deserve to eat, live, and die based on how effectively they are able to exchange their labor and capital with others. It is a denial that a monetary value can be ascribed to everything, that having a piece of delicious chocolate in your mouth is worth exactly fifty cents or that an hour of one person's life can really be worth ten dollars more than that of another person. It is a refusal to accept the capitalist system, in which workers have to buy back the products of their own labor at a profit to the owners of capital, who thus get them coming and going.”

"Shoplifting is more than a way to survive in the cutthroat competition of the 'free market' and protest corporate injustices. It is also a different kind of orientation to the world and to life. The shoplifter makes do with an environment that has been conquered by capitalism and industry, where there is no longer a natural world from which to gather resources and everything has become private property, without accepting it or the absurd way of life it entails. She takes her life into her own hands by applying an ancient method to the problem of modern survival: she lives by urban hunting and gathering. In this way she is able to live much as her distant ancestors did before the world was subjugated by technology, imperialism, and the irrational demands of the "free" market; and she can find the same challenges and rewards in her work, rewards that are lost to the rest of us today. For her, the world is as dangerous and as exciting as it was to prehistoric humanity: every day she is in new situations, confronting new risks, living by her wits in a constantly changing environment."
(via crimethinc)

and Liberating Stuff You Need: A Guide to Political Shoplifting"The connection between American consumerism and war couldn’t be more clear: the economic system that this country runs on perpetuates war because it needs war in order to survive. From the earliest origins of the anti-war movement, efforts have been made to “divest” from and take action against the war-economy....."

Tuesday, 14 December 2004

an old farmer named Hyrieus offered hospitality to 3 passing strangers who turned out to be the gods Zeus, Poseidon and Hermes.

in return, the gods offered to father a son for Hyrieus by urinating on the hide of the ox that they had just consumed. Hyrieus buried the hide and in due course a boy was born from it. Hyrieus named him Urion, after the mode of his conception.

we're a world-wide network of local, community-based groups, all dedicated to building our own space ships.

We have been fooled, conned into letting governments and armies get into space on our behalf. Occasionally they will dangle little tit bits in front of us like "life on Mars" or "ice on the Moon", but nothing really changes. It must be apparent that their interests are not ours. Now is the time for everyone, for all of us here to do it for ourselves - and for each other.

"There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that." ...Camus

"Living the absurd... means a total lack of hope (which is not the same as despair), a permanent reflection (which is not the same as renunciation), and a conscious dissatisfaction (which is not the same as juvenile anxiety)."

"Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality."
....Jules de Gaultier

"Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions."
....Albert Einstein

"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere."
....Albert Einstein

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand."
....Albert Einstein

in Malabar when the ruler's 12 year term of office was at an end it was customary for him to stand up before the cheering crowd and generously slit his own throat

When his time came, the king had a wooden scaffolding constructed and spread over with hangings of silk. And when he had ritually bathed in a tank, with great ceremonies and to the sound of music, he proceeded to the temple, where he paid worship to the divinity. Then he mounted the scaffolding and, before the people, took some very sharp knives and began to cut off parts of his body - nose, ears, lips, and all his members, and as much of his flesh as he was able - throwing them away and round about, until so much of his blood was spilled that he began to faint, whereupon he slit his throat." (Campbell 1959 165).

when one falls out of love, the conventional consolation is that one has been blinded by sexual infatuation or naivete; but perhaps the reverse is the case. "our disappointment is due to a failure of our own sensibility , which lacks the strength to mantain itself at the acuteness with which it began," he speculated in his journal immediately after Gerhart Meyer had deserted him in april 1929. "people may really be what we first thought of them, and what we subsequently think of as the disappointing reality [is the fault of] the staleness of our senses"

Saturday, 11 December 2004

A new uk government bill published this week would give local authorities new powers to tackle, among other things, flyposting and graffiti... blah blah blah.

Patrick Parsons, leader of the street team which forms part of Westminster Council's Anti-Flyposting and Graffiti unit, says he gets"great satisfaction" from his job and "it's a revolving circle but we are winning the battle."

and street team member Craig Simpson, 19, of West London, says of his role: "I feel like a superhero saving the day."

but why do superheroes always have to be such super squares? always so eager to repair the status quo without ever questioning it.

Thursday, 9 December 2004

Canada's Supreme Court has told the government it can legalise gay marriage without violating the constitution.

The move comes hours after New Zealand's parliament voted to recognise civil unions between gay couples.

the majority of Canadians are in favour of same-sex marriage. Gay marriage is already legal in six of the 10 Canadian provinces and one of its three northern territories, but it remains illegal in the rest of the country.

whenever i read about the new american dark ages i can't help being taken back to the morning of september 11th.

not september 11th 1973, when america encouraged the overthrow of chile's DEMOCRATICALLY elected government and supported the bloody reign of general pinochet, where constitutional civil liberties and human rights were curtailed, resulting in the deaths of approximately 3,000 Chileans and the torture and disappearance of thousands more. (In a situation report, U.S. Naval attache Patrick Ryan, reports positively on events in Chile during the coup. He characterizes September 11 as "our D-Day," and states that "Chile's coup de etat [sic] was close to perfect." His report provides details on Chilean military operations during and after the coup, as well as glowing commentary on the character of the new regime.) ....Torture survivor in Chile speaks..... (and lets not forget "top CIA officials proposed a terrorist campaign to stun the Chilean people into accepting a military regime." thousands of declasified US documents explicating the US role in the coup have been synthesised in a book 'The Pinochet File', by Peter Kornbluh)

no..... i mean the morning of september 11th 2001, when i arrived at my central london gym to find everybody huddled in silence around a tv monitor. a silence that was broken by my overly enthusiastic enquiry as to wether or not they'd suceeded in erasing bush and his buddies.

it was then, while learning that bush was apparently still alive, that my vocal disappointment was met with such a unified disapproval, i was alerted to the fact that this was one of those group-mind moments........ that i was (thankfully) outside of.

mass death and destruction is nothing new on the telly. earlier that same year an earthquake in india killed more than 20,000 people and left 600,000 homeless. yet for some reason the networks weren't inspired to cancel their entire schedules and focus solely on that tragedy.

but this made-in-america event...... this was being presented to us differently. repeatedly. endlessly. totally.

aldous huxley, in 1962, highlighted that "Pavlov made some extremely profound observations both on animals and on human beings. And he found among other things that conditioning techniques applied to animals or humans in a state either of psychological or physical stress sank in very deeply into the mind-body of the creature, and were extremely difficult to get rid of. That they seemed to be embedded more deeply than other forms of conditioning...."

ever since that morning i have felt like Kevin McCarthy's character in the 1978 remake of 'invasion of the body snatchers', ......reduced to an ironic cameo, but still running through the traffic, desperately attempting to communicate just what is going on.

Documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union show that the more the government is forced to reveal, the more we learn that individuals in US custody... were tortured and abused.

According to the memos, detainees held in Iraq often arrived at prisons, including Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail, which was at the centre of allegations of systematic prisoner abuse, bearing "burn marks" on their backs.

One memo, from Vice Admiral Lowell E Jacoby, head of the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), describes how staff who complained about abuse were threatened, had their car keys confiscated and e-mails monitored, as well as being ordered not to leave the base or speak to friends or relatives in the US.

Another details an incident in which a prisoner was punched in the face by military personnel "to the point he needed medical attention".

Task force staff did not record the medical treatment and confiscated DIA photographs of the injuries, the memo says.

Both documents were dated 25 June 2004.

The ACLU disclosures follow reports that a senior FBI official complained in 2002 about "highly aggressive" interrogation techniques at the US camp at Guantanamo Bay.

Bush is interested in Gerald Allen's opinions because Allen is an elected Republican representative in the Alabama state legislature. He is Bush's base. Last week, Bush's base introduced a bill that would ban the use of state funds to purchase any books or other materials that "promote homosexuality". Allen does not want taxpayers' money to support "positive depictions of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle".

Last month, "14 states passed referendums defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman". Exit polls asked people what they considered the most important issue, and "moral values in this country" were "the top of the list".

The enemy, this time, is not al-Qaida. The axis of evil is "Hollywood, the music industry". We have an obligation to "save society from moral destruction". We have to prevent liberal libarians and trendy teachers from "re-engineering society's fabric in the minds of our children". We have to "protect Alabamians".

"it's not censorship", Allen hastens to explain. "For instance, there's a reason for stop lights. You're driving a vehicle, you see that stop light, and I hope you stop." Who can argue with something as reasonable as stop lights? Of course, if you're gay, this particular traffic light never changes to green.

.......First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me......Pastor Martin Niemöller

The forthcoming Hollywood adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy is to sacrifice many of the film's anti-religious sentiments in an effort to avoid a backlash from America's Christian right

A child still dies of hunger every five seconds, eight years on from a pledge to halve the world's hungry by 2015, a United Nations agency has said.

The annual UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) report says present levels of hunger cause the death of more than five million children a year.

The number of chronically hungry people has hardly budged since 1996. All but one of the 16 hungriest nations are in sub-Saharan Africa

Governments set the target of cutting the number of undernourished people by half in 2015 at the UN World Food Summit in 1996. But by 2000-2002, the number of chronically hungry in developing nations stood at 815 million, only nine million fewer than the estimate made a decade earlier.

"The Incredibles is positively Nietzschean. Some people are just better than other people, it seems to say, and their resentful inferiors ought not to try to suppress them, but to let them shine."

"The Incredibles is the story of how the egalitarian drive in modern America killed off the superhero. It’s a passionate and politically incorrect plea for truth, justice and the Nietzschean way."

"Not only does it attack the ludicrous compensation culture and support marriage, but it also takes a surprising stand against the stupid slogans of the egalitarians who claim everyone is the same. When the superheroes' son Dash is told that 'everyone is special' - that awful, lowering-slogan deployed in thousands of schools to justify holding everyone to the pace of the slowest - Dash retorts: 'Which is another way of saying nobody is.' Well, exactly. If the enormous power of films and TV had been used to support such wisdom for the past 50 years, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now." etc etc

"Hitler's Germany amalgamated state with church. Soldiers of the vermacht wore belt buckles inscribed with the following: "Gott mit uns" (God is with us). His troops were often sprinkled with holy water by the priests. It was a real Christian country whose citizens were indoctrinated by both state and church and blindly followed all authority figures, political and ecclesiastical.

Hitler, like some of today's politicians and preachers, politicized "family values." He liked corporeal punishment in home and school. Jesus prayers became mandatory in all schools under his administration. While abortion was illegal in pre-Hitler Germany, he took it to new depths of enforcement, requiring all doctors to report to the government the circumstances of all miscarriages. He openly despised homosexuality and criminalized it."

For anyone wanting even more proof, Mein Kampf is chock full of the Fuhrer's musings on God. ("I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord," Hitler wrote).

minus the anti-Semitic rants, many of Hitler's faith-based comments could have come from George Bush himself, and are undoubtedly the kinds of sentiments many Americans not only agree with -- but take comfort in.

Hitler himself often expressed his admiration for the expediency in which the American Christians removed the Native Americans and gave them mass graves like the one in Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

Christianity has been used to justify everything from the Salem witch trials to slavery in America, and it facilitated group-think in Germany -- when individuality and questions of conscience were needed the most.

In 2020, whipping out your mobile phone to make a call will be rather quaint. By then phones will be printed directly on to wrists, or other parts of the body, says Ian Pearson, BT's resident futurologist

Wearable technology could exploit body heat to charge it up, while "video tattoos", or intelligent electronic contact lenses, might function as TV screens for those on the move.

Inanimate objects will start to interact with us: we will be surrounded - on streets, in homes, in appliances, on our bodies and possibly in our heads - by things that "think".

Russian scientists are selecting volunteers to be locked in a capsule for 500 days to test plans for a trip to Mars. A team of six men will be physically cut off from the outside world to test equipment intended to make them self-sufficient for long periods.

Their capsule will consist of a bedroom, a kitchen and a laboratory.

The capsule's own equipment should make all of the oxygen they need, repeatedly recycle three tonnes of water and grow some food to add to five tonnes of supplies packed inside.

during his tenure as Texas governor, Bush was the chief executioner in the United States. As Alan Berlow wrote: "During Bush's six years as governor 150 men and two women were executed in Texas - a record unmatched by any other governor in modern American history. Each time a person was sentenced to death, Bush received from his legal counsel a document summarizing the facts of the case, usually on the morning of the day scheduled for the execution, and was then briefed on those presumed facts by his counsel.

"Based on this information, Bush allowed the execution to proceed in all cases but one." Berlow says the first 57 of these summaries were written by Gonzales and were Bush's primary sources of information in deciding whether someone would live or die.

In the July 20, 2003, Washington Post, Peter Carlson wrote, "It's hard not to conclude that both Gonzales and Bush were rather callous, even cavalier, about the most profound decision any government official can make—the decision to kill another human being." And now Gonzales will be america's chief law enforcement officer.

"People waited on line for as long as 10 hours. It appears to have only happened in Democratic-leaning precincts, principally (a) precincts where many African Americans lived, and (b) precincts near colleges. I spoke to a young man who got on line at 11:30 am and voted at 7 pm. When he left at 7 pm, the line was about 150 voters longer than when he'd arrived, which meant those people were going to wait even longer. In fact they waited for as much as 10 hours, and their voting was concluded at about 3 am. The reason this occurred was that they had 1 voting station per 1000 voters, while the adjacent precinct had 1 voting station per 184. Both precincts were within the same county, and managed by the same county board of elections. The difference between them is that the privileged polling place was in a rural, solidly Republican, area, while the one with long lines was in the college town of Gambier, OH."

no this isn't a post referring to the death of my hard-drive that occured last thursday, though its perhaps worth noting that posts are subsequently going be less frequent for awhile.... (this borrowed iBook goes back to its owner tomorrow)

nor is it my suicide note. despite now being limited to just one functioning screen in my home ....... fucking television, what a shitty and impoverished information conduit it is.

its amazing how the idealised notion of so called "balanced" and "impartial" reporting is all too predictably abandoned when the mainstream decides to speak to us about certain subjects.

so as an immediate reply, heres a few quotes from the absent side of the issue.....

"they tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.?" ....Arthur Schopenhauer

"suicide is... the sincerest form of criticism life gets." ....Wilfred Sheed

"Death is for many of us the gate of hell; but we are inside on the way out, not outside on the way in." ....George Bernard Shaw

you wouldn't think that the fundamentalist dark age that is ascending across america would stand much chance in britain. but a bill that extends the offence of incitement to racial hatred, under the Public Order Act 1988, to cover religious hatred may well be just the thin end of the wedge.

last night comedian Rowan Atkinson gave an impassioned defence of the right to lampoon religion as he joined Tory, Lib Dem, and Labour backbenchers, lawyers, and academics opposed to this part of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill - which today gets its second reading.

At the meeting in Westminster, he insisted that "there should be no subjects about which you cannot make jokes".

There was, he said, a fundamental difference between race - already covered by legislation - and religion. "To criticise a person for their race is a manifestly irrational and ridiculous. But to criticise their religion - that is a right. That is a freedom. And a law that attempts to say you can criticise or ridicule ideas, as long as they are not religious ideas, is a very peculiar law indeed"....."It all points to the promotion of the idea there should be a right not to be offended... In my view, the right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended."

Personally i would add that its surely a fundamental right to vigorously respond to any and every dominant immersant culture in any manner i choose. having been subjected to christian ideology at school, where morning church attendance was tiresomely compulsory (even if i did just sit there secretly reading sci-fi, or better still wanking the boy next to me with his blazer placed across our laps), it is my right to choose how i frame my responses to christian (or similar) mumbo jumbo and all its stark hypocrosies where-ever it attempts to intrude upon or dictate my existence.

all the more so as a queer, subjected to the damaging opinions of powerful christian figures such as the pope who declares that we are "evil", and especially under the grim retrogressive shadow of the new fundamentalist american dark age. bring back the sport of feeding them to the lions i say and let the rest of us get on with evolving.

plus..... if God exists, how do we know he is not evil?

and........ belief in God is not sufficient to guarantee morality, while judging by america's example it clearly has nothing to do with encouraging compassion, despite jesus emphasising the particular importance of loving thy neighbour.

including....
Stock up on birth control pills.
Drink a nice clean glass of water.
Spend quality time with your draft age child/grandchild.
Borrow books from library before they're banned
Stay out late before the curfews start.
start your school day without a prayer.
pass on the secrets of evolution to future generations.
Attend a commitment ceremony with your gay friends.
take photographs of animals on the endangered species list.
Visit Alaska before "The Big Spill."

The Black Sox scandal of 1919 started out as a few gamblers trying to get rich, and turned into one of the biggest, and easily the darkest, event in baseball history. It was another jolt to a nation already in turmoil and made the American people lose faith in the game they loved. The players and conspirators are long dead, but the controvery rages on. How much did everyone know? How big a part did people play? Who did what? And lastly, should "Shoeless" Joe be admitted to the Hall of Fame, an honor he otherwise earned? Thankfully, Joe was not bitter, even in the end. A holy man was he, and I leave you with his words:

"I am going to meet the greatest umpire of all -- and He knows I'm innocent." --"Shoeless" Joe Jackson

if America's real intention was to spread freedom and democracy to the countries of the Middle East, why didn't they start by introducing it first to their friends in the region, such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain?

The American Civil Liberties Union disclosed documents that it says show the terrorism task force is spying on american citizens who are politically active.

"These kind of actions on the part of the FBI are very dangerous in a democracy," Mark Silverstein, legal director for the ACLU in Colorado, said at a Denver news conference.

The ACLU's 24-page request, which the group posted on its website, says the FBI has labeled nonviolent protesters as members of terrorist organizations in a computerized database called the Violent Gang and Terrorist Organization File.

Philadelphia, PA — The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), an international social justice organization, joined a nationwide series of Freedom of Information Act requests filed on Thursday. Citing evidence indicating that the FBI has targeted particular groups and individuals for surveillance — not because they have any connections to terrorism but solely because they have policy differences with government agencies — the Service Committee, including regional offices in Denver, Chicago and Portland, Oregon, joined the American Civil Liberties Union and a host of religious, environmental and civil rights organizations hoping to shed light on the scope of activities.

“There is mounting evidence that groups and individuals who exercise their First Amendment rights are being unfairly targeted and scrutinized,” said Mary Ellen McNish, general secretary for the Service Committee.

In the seventies, public exposure of the Pentagon papers, FBI files and other documents gave a glimpse of the vast extent of illegal surveillance, record keeping and disruptive — and sometimes lethal — activity carried on by government intelligence agencies, from the CIA and FBI down to local police, against large numbers of American citizens. In fact, AFSC secured hundreds of federal files detailing government surveillance projects and intelligence documents targeting US peace groups under the freedom of information act during this period.

While public awareness of illegal or misused intelligence has no doubt increased since Watergate and subsequent revelations, a growing number of Americans do not remember the seventies. Today’s thirty-year olds were not even born when massive problems with FBI surveillance surfaced.

"We don't do body counts," said General Tommy Franks of US Central Command. The question is: what happens to the people who insist on counting the bodies - the doctors who must pronounce their patients dead, the journalists who document these losses, the clerics who denounce them?

In Iraq, evidence is mounting that these voices are being systematically silenced through a variety of means, from mass arrests, to raids on hospitals, media bans, and overt and unexplained physical attacks.

Mr Ambassador, I believe that your government and its Iraqi surrogates are waging two wars in Iraq. One war is against the Iraqi people, and it has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. The other is a war on witnesses.

"Ever felt you're missing the point with some of our biggest cultural heroes? everyone can name at least one hip, wildly praised band, album, film, TV show or author that they've never really rated. Guardian Guide writers get personal and demolish some of the "greats" they hate" ...... and about time too.

Elvis may have been the first pop star but he was also the first sell-out, making a series of god-awful movies before prostituting himself for Vegas, the icing on the cake (or the burger) for a career that had all the credibility and substance of Liberace - and with some of the same costumes.....

the Beatles As if polluting the 1960s with their safe, insipid music wasn't bad enough, they've exerted a stranglehold on culture since, inspiring generations of terrible bands.....

Bowie is essentially a mildly amusing purveyor of novelty pop who has struck lucky more than most. Less Ziggy Stardust, more Alvin.

Bob Marley When Marley sang of being "Iron, like a lion, in Zion," one braced for the shout out to his mate Brian, who had a tie on. As one Marley fan said to another when the dope wore off: "Christ, this music's terrible."

Nirvana the defining band of the early 90s; but the early 90s was the most rubbish era in pop history. Who were the competition? Cobain must have felt like Daley Thompson winning We Are The Champions.

I pulled my mouth away and bit through his bottom lip. He cried, but didn't jerk back. "Maybe you are a god," I said, gasping from the effort of holding myself up and fucking him at the same time. I rocked against Christ, using the cross to pull myself up, then letting my weight pull me down, jamming his cock deep inside of me. "Or maybe you want to be."

Christ moaned again. The new wound I'd made to his mouth made it difficult for him to speak clearly: "I will rise," he said. "God's will be done. I will rise."

"And so you have," I said, still pulling myself up and down on his cock. Slower now, I wanted to prolong the thin rage of blood that kept his cock pulsing. "You've risen nicely." I pulled myself tight to Christ, his body slick with sweat and blood. He groaned and thrust hard. I could feel the sperm's release."

"Serously, I am not being nasty. I am a virgin and it is the most exciting thing I could do for Jesus when he returns. It will make him feel great. I wonder if he has ever had his dick sucked before? He will know such joy. If God didn't want us to suck dicks he wouldn't have made dicks and mouths. Dicksucking has been going on for a long time and it is a great way to stay a virgin yet still please someone. I will give myself to the Lord and suck him until his penisexplodes with holy semen in my mouth."

A Polynesian primeval god, who divided in two. So he became the god Rangi and the goddess Papa; the parents of all the other gods.

In the myths of Tahuata (the Marquesas), Atea ("Space") emerged one morning from Chaos (Tanaoa the god of the primeval darkness.). Freeing himself, he made room for Atanua to arise. They married and had a son, Tu-Mea, the first man.

In Tuamotuan mythology, Atea was the sky god, who married Fa'ahotu, but after their firstborn, the magician Tahu, died of starvation on Fa'ahotu's flat bosom, and others followed, the two gods exchanged sexes.

A legend is told of Atea and Tane, a younger god whom Atea tried to capture. After having sent a host of deities against Tane, the young god escaped to Earth and wandered, finally becoming so hungry that he killed and ate one of his ancestors. This was the beginning of what was to become cannibalism. Reaching manhood, Tane declared war on Atea, and slew him with the thunderbolts of his ancestor, Fatu-tiri.

"There's only one creator, and it has to be God," said Rebecca Cashman, 16, a sophomore at Dover High. She frowned when asked to recollect what she learned about evolution at school last year.

"Evolution ... is that the Darwin theory?" Cashman shook her head. "I don't know just what he was thinking!"

The school board has ordered that biology teachers at Dover Area High School make students "aware of gaps/problems" in the theory of evolution. Their ninth-grade curriculum now must include the theory of "intelligent design," which posits that life is so complex and elaborate that some greater wisdom has to be behind it. On an intelligent-design Web site, the theory is described as "a scientific disagreement with the claim of evolutionary theory that natural phenomena are not designed." it is in reality just "creationism lite". The new curriculum, which prompted two school board members to resign, is expected to take effect in January.

The drive to bring more religion and what have been labeled "moral values" into the classroom goes beyond challenges to Darwin's theory, Scott said. The Charles County school board also proposed to censor school reading lists of "immorality" or "foul language" and to allow the distribution of Bibles in schools. In Texas, the nation's second-biggest school textbook market, the State Board of Education approved health textbooks that defined abstinence as the only form of contraception and changed the description of marriage between "two people" to "a lifelong union between a husband and a wife."

"The religious right has a list of topics that it wants action on," Scott said. "Things like abortion, abstinence, gays are higher up in the food chain of their concern, but evolution is part of the package."

This drive has found fertile ground in this part of Pennsylvania, where billboards reading, "Many books inform but only the Bible transforms" line the road, and family restaurants offer free booklets titled "What the Bible says about moral purity" and "The Bible is God's word" at the door.

A design for lifeAmerica's latest creationist theory relies less on Biblical absolutes than on appeals to today's cultural relativism. by Anthony Stavrianakis

and...

Fundamentalist Devils, Postmodernist Angelsthe rise of so-called "intelligent design" arguments (that is to say, primarily fundamentalist Christians and others with one foot in the twenty-first century and another in the thirteenth, who decry the teaching of the theory of evolution in high school biology classes either because they are unpardonably ignorant or stupid themselves, or because they are eager to cynically manipulate others who are unpardonably ignorant or stupid as a way to tighten their grip on power and serve their financial or otherwise socially conservative agendas).

Wear a Black Ribbon to symbolize your disgust and horror at Bush's new Vietnam, and to support the U.S. withdrawing from Iraq

Black like the hearts of those who have ordered this monstrosity of a war to occur. Black as the despair of the families of the more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians, and more than 1,000 American soldiers killed during this tragedy.
(via what really happened)